Yes, you can. Just shrink Windows XP's primary partition, create a new partition in that blank space, format that NTFS, title it Windows 8.1 to prevent destruction of Windows XP, reboot and install to that partition.

Yes, you can. Just shrink Windows XP's primary partition, create a new partition in that blank space, format that NTFS, title it Windows 8.1 to prevent destruction of Windows XP, reboot and install to that partition.

Oh and btw. Windows 8.1 Upgrade Assistant will NOT work on Windows XP,instead you will need to get an Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant which should work with Win XP,although I CANNOT confirm that, since it did not worked for me (running Windows XP PRO SP2 64-bitI got an Error msg: This platform is not supported.

If already one company refuses to support their own stuff...Well... worthless to comment further